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Published: January 9th 2006
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Bow River
Taken on my first day in Banff! How did that happen? Time is going so quickly here that I think I will be 85 before I know it... I thought I should update this blog for you all as it has been a while! I think that last time I updated it I had just started working here, apologies for being so slack!
Working at the hostel is pretty good. I'm getting to meet a load of new people which is cool. Most of them are Australians. In fact I think that there are more Australians here than I will meet when I actually get to their home country! You can spot them a mile off in the hostel as they are the ones that are always walking around with flip-flops on (they call them thongs (!)), some of them try and brave shorts when they first get here but that gernerally doesn't last that long!
There are quite a few of us working at the front desk now so we quite often get three days off a week which is great as it means that I am able to get plenty of skiing in. Yes, all you die hard boarders, I did say skiing. I
Em and Pete's Wedding Spot
Where Em and Pete got married last year minus the snow and ice! have gone to the dark side and I chose skiing over boarding. I have bought some very cool K2 Public Enemy's though so I am half accepted by the boarders. Just last week one of the snowboard instructers commented to me that I had 'very cool skis' so they must be ok. They're twin-tips so in theory I should be taking them into the snow park and pulling off jumps, sliding rails and wowing everyone in the half-pipe, the realty of things is slightly different..... I have starting jumping whenever I get the oppurtunity though, it's great fun! My aim on my three days off this week is to learn how to ski backwards! I've also managed to get some boarding in too, one of the (few) perks of this jobs is that I can occassionally get free rentals so I've been out boarding for four days since I got here.
Christmas and New Year were both excellent and (not surprisingly), very drunken! I was working on Christmas morning but the afternoon was spent having a gigantic snow ball fight, followed by cooking my first ever Christmas dinner. It wouldn't have been too bad, but I had 16 people
Sulphur Mountain
The view from Sulphur Mountain at sunset. to feed! Amazingly, it wasn't a disaster, and a number of Canadians and Australians got to experience their first English style Christmas dinner - to think that they had never heard of bread sauce and pigs in blankets before!! I need to send a quick thanks out to my mother though, who was very patient and put up with my numerous calls back home on Christmas day with questions about how to cook turkey, couliflower cheese, pigs in blankets, roasters...... actually, pretty much the whole thing! So a big thanks mum, from me and the other 15 mouths that had to be fed!!
I also had to work until 11pm on New Years eve, fortunately a number of people took pity on me and sneaked me up some drinks from the bar to keep me going, which meant I was well on the way by the time I finished! We had been told that there were to be fireworks let off from Tunnel Mountain at midnight, so off we traipsed to a place called 'The Lookout', which is a small open area about 5 minutes away from the hostel, on Tunnel Mountain, which looks out over the two mountains
Christmas Eve
Me looking particularly fetching when out on Christmas Eve. behind us (it's a beautiful spot), hoping to see the New Year in in style. Unfortunately, we were the wrong side of Tunnel Mountain. We certainly heard the fireworks going off, and occasionally saw a faint glow of light above the mountain top, but that was about it as far as the fireworks went!! But still, it was a great place to see in the New Year, surrounded by beautiful mountains and a clear starry sky, it sure beats some sweaty bar on Broad Street!! The celebrations went late on into the night and the 5.30am finish didn't affect my performance at work the next day at all.......!!
I've managed to tick off one of the things that I wanted to do whilst here, and that is ice climbing! Strangely enough, the hostel builds it's own ice wall, 35 feet of vertical ice!! I think they claim that it's the biggest man-made ice wall in Alberta, or something like that, not sure how true that is though! It is very cool though, and really hard work! There is a frozen ice-wall near the ski resort that you can always see from the gondola (occasionally with people climbing it), apparently
Roasters!
Me sorting out the roasters on Christmas Day!! it is the same difficulty as our ice-wall, but about 20 times higher - I don't think I will be in any hurry to give that one a go!!
Well, I've just managed to spend most of my shift writing this and trying to get some photos on here too, hopefully it will have worked!!
Hope that everyone is well and enjoyed my update, if I managed to bore half of you to tears then please let me know and I'll make it shorter next time! Please keep in touch and let me know what you've all been up to! I'll not leave it so long to update this next time.....
Take care and have fun!
Lucy
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Trev
non-member comment
what are pigs in blankets ?
Hi luce Great to hear you are getting on ok, mmm water ice climbing! Very tempting, make a change to Scottish Slush climbing! A few of us are off to Chantel on saturday, were staying at the place Dave and Pol are running, so looking foward to some good boarding, what's this you buying twin planks! take care u T